The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireless networks. Various types of networking technologies have been, and are being developed resulting in unprecedented expansion of computer networks, television networks, telephony networks, and other communications networks. As new networking technologies evolve, consumer demand continues to fuel increased innovation with respect to utilization of networks. Wireless and mobile networking technologies continue to address related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
With an associated increase in the utilization of communications and other computing devices, information management within and between devices has become increasingly important. In this regard, information may be stored in a variety of locations and in a variety of forms. For example, information may be stored such that it is accessible via a network, such as on a data server. Alternatively, information may be stored on memory that is local to a device, such as on a hard drive or a flash memory. Further, data may be stored in different forms such as in an encrypted form for security purposes.
Regardless of the location or form in which data is stored, a risk of data loss can exist. Data loss can result from user error, hardware failure due to, for example, damage to a memory device, or through the loss of connectivity to a device maintaining the data. In some instances, such as in smart space or dynamic distributed device environments, where devices and associated data may connect or disconnect at any time, data loss can be increasingly problematic due to the potential of frequent and unpredictable disconnections.
Accordingly, mechanisms for avoiding data loss have value, since, in many instances, lost data may result in lost time and effort. As a result, data consumers often rely upon redundancy of data storage such as via backup storage or other redundancy mechanisms. Unfortunately, redundancy mechanisms often require double the storage capacity, and require substantial communication resources to move data to the redundant storage location.